Infrastructure for postage meter communication, accessible through service provider
OwnerMark Ferraroinventor
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A system for providing postal and other services to postal security devices is established in which a secured communication connection is obtained through a service provider. The connection once established provides access to a central postal data center. As part of the authentication of a connection by the service provider, the service provider generates a session key having a discrete time limit. Expiration of the time limit terminates the session key. Security keys are provided to the service provider, with reference to public keys of the service provider, by the data center communication infrastructure.
Claims16
A system for providing postal and other services to postal security devices (PSDs) comprising:
- one or more networks connected to one or more customer servers;
- one or more PSDs connected to a communication system through the one or more networks;
- an infrastructure server for providing access to a data center containing accounting and other data relative to the operation of the one or more PSDs;
- a service provider server accessible to the one or more networks to provide postal and other services to the one or more PSDs, wherein the service provider server further comprises a security software module having a security algorithm for execution by the service provider server, to allow authentication of a connection to one or more of the PSDs for the purpose of obtaining services and accessing the data center.
A method of processing a postal customer request for services through a service provider comprising the steps of:
- receiving a request from a customer at the service provider;
- authenticating the request at the service provider;
- generating a session key at the service provider, including a time limit after which the session key expires;
- transmitting the customer request with the session key to a postal infrastructure connected to a data center;
- checking session key time limit at the postal infrastructure and terminating connection if expired;
- validating the service provider at the postal infrastructure;
- and
- processing the customer request.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.